The 1944 Butler Education Act ~ part two

We have already seen, in part one of this blog, how the 1944 Education Act drastically transformed schools in England and Wales. However, but not all councils embraced it. Welsh councils in rural areas tended to oppose change more than their counterparts in more urban areas, in part due to logistics:  local geography and population density made change difficult.

Gareth Jones (2002) notes that some councils tried their best to resist the Ministry of Education’s Welsh Department tripartite system of secondary education attempts after 1944 [1] although there was general support for the end of elementary education [2]. In rural areas, the tripartite system was impractical and 'the Welsh Department of the Board of Education had little choice but to bow to this logic to an extent while preserving a bipartite system as far as possible.' [3] Jones gives the example of rural Radnorshire with fewer than three hundred children entering secondary education. Before the war, there were only two mixed secondary schools for the county, in addition to all-age elementary schools. Under the revision proposed by the Butler Act, all senior pupils would go to secondary / grammar schools across the county and the first two to three years provided a more general education. Jones writes that the Radnorshire LEA’s development plan was eventually approved - 'it resulted in only one bilateral school, one grammar school and two secondary modern schools with a further small school having the option of being either a grammar or modern school.' He goes on:

'Most rural county councils remained dominated by Independent or Liberal groupings and were more conservative in outlook than their industrial counterparts…The rural authorities were forced to propose some form of bilateral structure, sometimes with a common curriculum for the first two years of secondary schooling. The Welsh Department … was forced to accept a wholly bipartite system was impossible but there should be as many grammar schools as possible. The two-year common curriculum was ruled out.' [4]

Aberystwyth saw many changes brought about by Rab Butler’s post-war educational reforms.  After the Act, several schools were established in Aberystwyth in the following decade, described in 1949 [5] as ‘The New Welsh Schools Experiment at Aberystwyth’ where Welsh medium schools were provided increasingly in North and South Wales. 

(Readers may be interested in Tom Buswell’s fascinating posts about Aberystwyth schools during WWII [6, 7], their participation in the war effort and providing education for   Liverpool evacuees.)

 

Penparcau Primary School 1945 https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/44908

One local school in particular moved locations several times as demand grew. Ysgol Gymraeg, or Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd as it was originally known, was the first Welsh-medium school, opened in 1939 as a private school by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards with Norah Isaac as the head (and only) teacher and termly fees of four guineas. According to the National Archives currency converter, this represented two days wages for a skilled tradesman. By the end of WWII, the school had over seventy pupils and four teachers and had outgrown the available space. 

 

Llwyn yr Eos School 1953. https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/44917

 

The school moved to Plas Lluest, a former gentleman’s residence in Llanbadarn Fawr, as Ysgol Lluest but Isaac remained the head teacher until 1949. Throughout, the main principle was to preserve Welsh medium teaching with parents fighting ‘the local education authority to take over the school and … responsibility for Welsh language teaching.’ [8] Ysgol Gymraeg moved to Alexander Road in 1952 after being taken over by the LEA, moving next to Plascrug Leisure Centre, in 1989. The school’s website now notes over 400 enrolled pupils and eighteen teachers.  

Llwyn yr Eos County Primary School in Penparcau opened on 5th December 1952.  The building was extended from 1973-75 as Penglais Comprehensive. Secondary moderns persisted in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until the 1976 Education Act ended the tripartite system forever. Butler’s act brought in free secondary education and extended the school leaving age, but also subjected thousands of children to the tyranny of the eleven-plus. In Aberystwyth, the New Welsh Schools experiment also coincided with the expansion of Welsh medium teaching, something given a special prominence in the original proposals. 

 

 Assembly - opening of Dinas Secondary Modern School, 8th November, 1955.
https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/44930 

 

 

Following the Act, infants (4-7) were taught at Alexander Road School from September 1948 and children aged 7-11 went to North Road, with the rest of Alexandra Road reclassified as a Secondary Modern for 11+ pupils. [9]. North Road School became an English primary in 1951, catering for children between 5 and 11, with Welsh speaking pupils going to Alexander Road from September 1952. In September 1955, the senior section of Alexandra Road moved to the new Dinas Secondary Modern, at Cefn-llan, Waunfawr. [9]
 

Dinas Secondary Modern: https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/44928

Blog by R. S. Pyne

SOURCES:

[1] Jones, G. E. (2002) Policy and Power: One hundred years of Local Education Authorities in Wales, Oxford Review of Education, 28, 343-58: https://doi.org/10.1080/0305498022014345
[2] Jones (2002) p. 350.
[3] Jones (2002) p 351
[4] Jones (2002) p 351-352
[5] Anon (1949) THE NEW WELSH SCHOOLS: EXPERIMENT AT ABERYSTWYTH. Times Educational Supplement (1,765), 138–.
[6] Tom Buswell (2021) ‘Aberystwyth Schools during WWII – part 1’– September 27th 2021.
People's Voices in a People's War: Aberystwyth 1939-1945: September 2021 (aberystwythatwarww2.blogspot.com)
[7] Tom Buswell (2021) ‘Aberystwyth Schools during WWII – part two’ October 5th 2021
People's Voices in a People's War: Aberystwyth 1939-1945: Aberystwyth schools during WWII - part two (aberystwythatwarww2.blogspot.com)
[8] (2009) ‘First Welsh-medium primary school celebrates 70th anniversary’ Wales Online https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/first-welsh-medium-primary-school-celebrates-2084865 (accessed 15th June 2022)
[9]   Ceredigion Archives Website https://archifdy-ceredigion.org.uk/sched/sch.aby.html    
Alexandra Road Board and North Road School – reference ABY/C and ABY/N respectively.

The 1944 Butler Education Act ~ part one

 

The Right Honourable Richard (Rab) Butler MP - President of the Board of Education

The draft white paper on educational reform dated 9th July 1943 (1) can be read in full on the National Archives website. In this, Butler outlines proposals for post-war educational reform, in response to instructions from the War Cabinet in November 1942. The introductory page notes: ‘confidential discussions on various aspects of the scheme have been proceeding for some time.’

It is interesting that Butler does not call it reform but ‘educational reconstruction’ – national restructuring of secondary education in England and Wales. The education act had lofty aims – reconstruction in the closing stages of WWII and part of a four-year plan due to start as soon as possible. British people had already shown their character throughout the war years: ‘an enduring possession that will survive all the material losses inevitable in the present struggle’ (1) [para 1]. The nation’s children were important assets.

Education in Wales gets an entire section (1) [paragraphs 119-125], acknowledging its well-developed system of secondary education  from the 1889 Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, with growing demand for free secondary education which might be applied nationally in three stages: primary, secondary and further education (1) [Paragraph 119]. 

The Welsh Language has prominent status in Butler’s draft paper, not an extra subject to be covered in the curriculum but ‘related to the background of local and national history and geography and thus … a live part of the social as well as the intellectual life of each pupil’ (1) [Para 124]. A transcript of the debate in the House of Commons for the second reading of the Bill on the 19th of January 1944 (2) also mentions linking the national policy of reform with the ‘school life and work and with the cultural and linguistic history of the Welsh people.’ We will explore how Welsh medium secondary schools benefited in the second part of this blog, for example Aberystwyth’s Ysgol Gymraeg.

What exactly did Butler propose? Essentially, The Education Act of 1944 brought in free education for secondary children in England and Wales, but also introduced more reforms (see 4 and 5 for further reading). It clearly distinguished:

…between primary and secondary education with the elimination of the former all-age (5-14) elementary sector; ending fees charged for pupils attending publicly provided or grant aided secondary schools … the introduction of more equitable funding to localities and to different school sectors. Under the Act, the Board of Education was reconstituted as a new Ministry with extended power and plans were announced to extend the school leaving age from 14 to 15.’ (3)

 Local Education Authorities (LEAs) had to draw up plans to reorganise secondary education in their area and submit these to the newly created Department of Education. They mostly aimed to establish three streams: grammar, technical and secondary modern and provide equal opportunities for all backgrounds. Children would be separated into one of these streams based on their performance in the dreaded ‘11 plus’ exam. Grammar schools taught an academic curriculum to the most intellectually able twenty-five percent of schoolchildren. (6) 

In the early years of the tripartite system, children who failed could not go to university, only those from grammar schools were prepared for entrance exams but the 11-plus’ gatekeeper role declined with the emergence of unnselective comprehensives in some areas of the country. Some pupils transferred to grammars from secondary moderns at thirteen if academic performances improved, but the exams at the end of primary education were criticised as inefficient, putting many students in the wrong school. In some cases, this meant they never achieved their full potential. 

My late father passed the 11-plus in 1958 and went up to Nottingham University from grammar school, but he always said the test caused more stress than all his undergraduate exams! If he'd failed, he would have followed his own father down Mountain Ash or Penrhiwceiber Colliery. His experience came in the closing years of the tripartite system, but would have been similar to thousands from the South Wales coalfield in the first decades after WWII. My mother maintains she failed the 11-plus ‘on purpose’ so she could stay with her friends.

Rab Butler outlived his creation. Before his death in March 1982, he had seen the three-tier structure largely abolished in England and Wales. The process began from 1965, with Circular 10/65, ending with the 1976 Education Act. As we will see in the second part of this blog which focuses on Aberystwyth, most maintained grammar schools (and secondary moderns) amalgamated with other local schools, to form neighbourhood comprehensive schools. A few closed their doors forever.

Blog by R. S. Pyne

References:

 

(1)    Cabinet Memorandum. Educational Reconstruction. Note by the President of the Board of Education. Includes the draft White Paper. 9 July 1943 - National Archives website:  http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-66-38-wp-43-299-49.pdf (accessed 23rd June 2022) [public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0]

(2)    http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/jan/19/education-bill

(3)    Batteson, C. H. (1999) The 1944 Education Act Reconsidered. Educational review (Birmingham), 51 (1), 5–15.

(4)    Hempel, S. (1982) Lord Butler of the 1944 Act: architect of the modern education service. The Times Educational Supplement. (number 3428), 3–.

(5)    Middleton, N. (1972) Lord Butler and the education act of 1944. British Journal of Educational Studies, 20 (2), 178–191.

(6)    Bolton, P. (2015), Grammar school statistics (PDF), House of Commons Library (retrieved 13 June 2022)